9/11: `World no safer than 10 years back`

Beijing: Two terrorist attacks - one in India and the other in Pakistan - show that the world is no safer than it was 10 years ago when 9/11 took place, said a Chinese daily.

An editorial in the China Daily on Friday said that as preparations were on to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, two terrorist attacks in India and Pakistan on Wednesday have "reinforced the fact that the world is no safer than it was 10 years ago, and humanity still faces a formidable task to rid the world of the scourge of terrorism".

In India, 13 people were killed and 73 injured in a massive bombing in Delhi while in Pakistan, two suicide bombers killed over 20 people in Quetta city.

The editorial said that the Delhi attack has been described as the worst terrorist attack in India since terrorists carried out a number of coordinated attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai in 2008.

"These heinous crimes against innocent people make it crystal clear that the apparatus of international terrorism is still active. Therefore, even though the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces near the Pakistan capital in May, the fight against terrorism continues," it said.

It noted that the 9/11 attacks had profound consequences, "not only with regard the heightened security measures introduced in Western countries that have compromised privacy and even human rights, but also the escalation of animosity between the Muslim world and the West".

While commemorating the victims of the 9/11 attacks, "the world should also reflect on the lives lost as a result of military actions and other terrorist attacks and consider the fact that military might alone is unlikely to bring terrorism to an end", the editorial added.

"Conflicts and turbulence are the hotbed for terrorism. Poverty and backwardness form its soil."